Ars poetica (Art of poetry) by Farideh Hassanzadeh

Politicians, when speaking of peace
I remember the bloody flags,
the tombs of the unknown soldiers
and the rain of falling bombs.
Even when they speak of liberty
I see the darkness of solitary cells
and I hear the howls of prisoners.

But when a poet speaks of his dreams
for peace and liberty
I imagine a man, making love,
his eyelids closed,
his shoulders shining with dews,
and his heart beating so ardently
as the heart of a bird
who knows how to sing in a cage
to invite the other birds
from the far frosts
lost in the everlasting fogs.

From: https://poetrybreakfast.com/2024/05/21/ars-poetica-art-of-poetry-a-poem-by-farideh-hassanzadeh/#more-11528

Date: 2024

By: Farideh Hassanzadeh (19??- )

Plain Song by Tom Blake

This one’s a freebie
lhude sing cuccu

what is waxing, not wax
but aught else

we ebb and ebb
in the false azure

reverdie is a vote-winner
spring lays down, uncoiled

little trepid goslings
mown down by motorist

knot-holes in a garden fence
the thigh of an aphid bristles

bees are nowt now
here trembling is a haunted iPhone

no-one cannot tell me
we are not not here

thawing Ribena for the curl’d tongues
of lapidary insects

perched in the spray-top
or furred like a peach

I have heard the crickets singing
each to each

awful as the feathers
on a satellite dish.

From: https://www.anthropocenepoetry.org/post/plain-song-by-tom-blake

Date: 2024

By: Tom Blake (19??- )

I Saw the Geese by Beverley A’Court

And when we die & they ask,
‘What did you see?’ I’ll say;
I saw the geese;
carried in wind
like winged seed-cases,
a black-flecked & breaking strand across
the sky, above our heads, our house,
the line of an invisible wave,
their gently modulating ‘V’
forming and reforming,
ribbonning,
in ever-changing places
in rippling rivulets,
& then their streaming down
like wind-blown, falling seeds,
all spin and flicker,
filling the open sky,
showering the fields,
and sunset sand-flats
with wing-beating,
heart-beating
life.

From: https://en.ecopoiesis.ru/aktualnoe/news_post/in-resonance-with-the-earth-1

Date: 2024

By: Beverley A’Court (19??- )

Dictionary, 1950 by Gail Thomas

The year I was born
Orwellian, McCarthyism and brain-
washed darkened the air
as the H-bomb hatched. Post-
nuclear declared, we’re done.
Beautiful people with spray
tans sought head shrinkers
and homosexuals were booted
to funny farms. Post war boom
birthed suburbs, the charge card
and money market. Even BLT
and DJ joined the rush to normalcy
while LSD and DWI said
not so fast. Don’t make a federal
case out of it, we’re just antsy,
kvetching, bugging out.
Don’t blame us, we’re busy
making a baby boom.
Don’t blame us, it’s them
with a switch knife, zip gun,
assault rifle. Wait, we need
to protect ourselves
from ourselves.

From: https://oneartpoetry.com/2024/03/01/dictionary-1950-by-gail-thomas/

Date: 2024

By: Gail Thomas (1950- )

Still Life with Stump & Skull by Mira Rosenthal

Over a hundred years, no doubt, & big
enough to need grinding, left instead to gray
& grow smooth. Someone placed the skull
on the stump’s ringed plate, antlers still
attached in their sockets above the empty
eye holes. Two carcasses going old
together for company. Echo & reminder
of the direction we’re headed & how form
holds to order, skeleton within the tender
leaf or muscle stretched across a frame.
Watching these two page-white bones
fill day by day with fine lines & cracks
feels like reading two different translations
of the same source, the one written
in a language lost long before I came
to this road, this yard, this mulch scattered
over the ribs of roots inside the ground.

From: https://bhreview.org/articles/still-life-with-stump-skull/

Date: 2024

By: Mira Rosenthal (19??- )

Things We Hang on the Line by Heather Loudermilk

bras, one with a cup less
stretched out from holding
nothing; panties with blood
stains, splotches we can’t
scrub out or bleach over; work
shirts that smell like corn
liquor or have a small swipe
of joint ash on the pocket. If
you think secrets have to speak
to be told, you’ve never done
laundry like we have.

From: https://deadmule.com/heather-loudermilk-three-poems/

Date: 2024

By: Heather Loudermilk (19??- )